United Kingdom - Details of juvenile birching in Scotland

Glasgow Herald, 20 April 1994

Whip hand of the state

George Hume reports on how delinquent
young Scots once ran the risk of the rod

In Scotland today are hundreds of men with vivid
recall of the day, as boys, that they fell foul of
the law and were punished, in a more than usually
literal sense, by the strong arm of the law. They
will bear the scars yet, thin white lines on the
flesh of their buttocks [in
fact I know of no evidence that the marks from that
kind of birching were normally permanent -
C.F.], that were put there with a birch
rod when they were aged no more than eight to
16.

It is 46 years since judicial corporal
punishment of juveniles was removed from the
armoury of courts throughout the United Kingdom --
held to be ineffectual. But until that day in 1948
when sheriffs were no longer able to order up to 36
strokes with the birch or tawse, in Scotland
corporal punishment was widely used.

Hoax calls to the fire brigade, the placing of
obstacles on a railway line, cruelty to animals,
the vandalism of public property -- all appear,
from court records, to have made the perpetrators
sure-fire candidates for a visit to the cells below
the court, an examination by a police doctor, and a
thrashing -- once stripped -- that left blood as
well as tears.

The question of whether this was altogether a
good idea was examined by the so-called Cadogan
Committee which reported in the late 1930s that it
was not, if for no other reason that when it came
to curbing juvenile crime it did not. But the war
intervened and the report was not acted on for a
further decade.

Scottish courts in the 1930s believed in the
birch. Four times as many boys in Scotland were
whipped -- on the basis of percentages of
convictions -- than south of the Border and the
punishments permitted were considerably more
severe.

In England and Wales boys aged eight to 14 were
liable and the maximum penalty was 12 strokes of
the birch. In Scotland the age group open to
corporal punishment ran on a further two years --
to 16 -- and while 12 strokes of the birch was the
limit under 14 those who were that age and above
could receive up to 36 strokes with either a birch
or a tawse ... the latter instrument being held to
be more severe.

Birches were tailored to the size of the target
-- the smallest for the eight to tens, a larger
model for the 11 to thirteens, and a full-sized
affair for their bigger brothers. They were well
used.

In 1936, 70 birchings were ordered by the courts
in Edinburgh; Glasgow ran a close second with 69
while Aberdeen came in at 26. Altogether there were
230 birchings in Scotland that year, well down on
the 925 total of two decades earlier when the
courts appear to have gone into a frenzy and scarce
a birch tree in the land can have been left
unstripped of its twigs. Through the years the
average age of the victims appears to have been
12.

How severe was their punishment? Certainly a
judicial birching was far removed from a parental
spanking. Regulations required that the punishment
should be "sufficiently severe to cause a
repetition of it to be dreaded".

To give some idea of just how severe that might
be it is worth noting that in almost every case of
birching in Scotland the court ordered that the boy
be medically examined before the execution of the
sentence and that the doctor be present throughout
its infliction.

The regulations stipulated that if the doctor
considered that the prescribed number of strokes
could not be inflicted consistent with the health
of the boy he could fix a smaller number of strokes
and the punishment would be modified accordingly.
The doctor was also given the power to stop the
punishment "on medical grounds" at any time during
the course of it.

To ease the task of the police in carrying out
co rporal punishment a number of courts and police
stations were equipped with specially manufactured
benches to which boys could be securely strapped
down so that they could not move.

One such is to be seen at the People's Palace
Museum on Glasgow Green. It was in use at Govan
police station and has holes cut for the feet,
straps for the ankles, thighs and waist, and others
for the hands stretched out above the head. Any
naked 12-year-old held in that position and then
birched might, understandably, recall the event
half a century later.